4/18 News Roundup & Open Thread

﻿ It is easy to dismiss the “Come Together and Fight Back” Tour that this week will take Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez to eight cities in eight states this week as mere political theater. But this tour has the potential to finally begin redefining a Democratic Party that is still struggling with its identity after the disastrous 2014 and 2016 election cycles. That’s a big deal, not just for a party that lacks focus but for an American political process that will alter dramatically—for better or for worse—in the months and years to come.

Political parties change identities over time, as anyone who has watched the sorry trajectory of the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower can certainly attest. Sometimes, parties evolve. Sometimes, parties respond to moral and political demands that can no longer be denied. That was certainly the case for Democrats in the late 1940s and ’50s, when wise members of the party began to recognize the necessity of a clean break with the Southern segregationists who had historically been central figures in the Democratic coalition.

Though many Democrats still do not fully recognize the fact, their party is again at a moment where it must change.

﻿ The party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman began veering in the 1970s toward more centrist economic approaches. By the 1990s, it was swamped by so-called “Third Way” thinking that embraced free-trade fabulism, deregulation of banking and Wall Street, and the cruel lie that there can be some sort of “win-win” compromise between crony capitalism and the common good. It was never true that all Democrats favored centrist economics, but too many leaders constrained the party’s identity with a perceived need to keep on the right side of Wall Street.

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﻿The party does need to change. It must become dramatically more militant on economic issues. Democrats cannot simply say “no” to Donald Trump; they must provide a clear and coherent progressive populist alternative to the “billionaire populism” of a president who never was—and never will be—committed to advancing the interests of workers, farmers, small business owners, students, and retirees.

﻿ Democrats must also provide a clear and coherent alternative to the “Third Way” politics that weakens the message, and the appeal, of their party. The era of the so-called “New Democrats” and the old DLC (officially the Democratic Leadership Council but, in reality, as Jesse Jackson explained, “Democrats for the Leisure Class”) must be finished—once and for all.

Water insecurity is a global issue that encumbers marginalized and vulnerable communities around the world. When marginalized racial and ethnic minority communities are disproportionately burdened by environmental hazards (such as oil pipelines) compared to more privileged groups, this is known as environmental racism, and it’s a type of institutional racism. In Flint, Michigan, for instance, massive lead contamination resulted from a decision by local officials to cut costs by switching the municipal water source without treating the water to ensure it didn’t corrode lead-lined pipes. Flint is a majority African American community and one of the nation’s poorest cities. Public health experts posit that about 99,000 Flint residents were exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water, a fact that is potentially more concerning among the youngest children, in whom high lead levels can be neurotoxic and lead to permanent developmental disability.

Another example of environmental racism is the planned storage facility for the country’s high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain on land that abuts the homes of the Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute tribes of Nevada, who have ancestral ties to the mountains. The tribes, and other Nevada residents, were concerned about living in such close proximity to toxic hazards. With President Donald Trump’s most recent budget proposal, he hopes to revive plans for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

Native American Charles Whalen held his ground at Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota until the very end. When the executive order was given in February for the military to clear out protester encampments so that work on the Dakota Access Pipeline could proceed, authorities had to carry Whalen off in Zip-tie handcuffs.

He spent the next 24 hours in prison until friends on the East Coast came up with his $500 bail. His mother, Regina Brave, had been hauled off, too.

Whalen and his family haven’t given up their fight against a 1,172-mile pipeline that will go through four states, including the Lakota Indian reservation.

They’ll be in Solebury Township on Sunday raising awareness and funds before heading to the United Nations next week to take part in a conference for indigenous people in hopes of making a case for their plight.

“We want to bring attention to the pipeline issue but also (to) mineral rights being stolen from other indigenous people,” he said.

I’ve been pushing back on people’s use of bottled water whenever, wherever I get the opportunity.

Boss said the other day about his high school son, “He drinks 9 bottles of water a day!” or some such nonsense. He almost sounded proud. I said that maybe it was time to switch his son to one of the many new water bottles that keep water cold for long periods of time.

If we don’t buy it..

I’m lucky though, I have a well & the water tastes just fine – we use a Brita pitcher. Treated city water can be pretty horrid.

I’m fortunate that the aquifer which supplies our water is pretty good. There have been attempts to reroute, etc, and that seems to be one issue that progressives and conservatives have been able to rally around.

I’m guilty of bottled water. Ours is pretty much undrinkable. It’s public water from a well, and is very hard and tastes awful. Plus it often smells like a swimming pool. I buy the gallon jugs at the grocery. I am looking at under-sink filters, but they are pricey.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude oil exporter, is launching an ambitious renewable energy program to transform its power sector.

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The kingdom is pledging between $30-$50 billion to develop 30 solar and wind projects over the next 10 years to boost electricity generation and curb oil consumption.

Saudi Arabia wants 10 percent of its electricity to come from renewables in the next six years, energy minister Khalid Al-Falih said Monday at a conference in Riyadh.

He said that the new projects will help the country reach a goal of about 10 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2023. The plan also includes an unspecified amount of electricity generated from nuclear plants.

The project will kick off in Southern Punjab schools and expand in phases across the province, according to a local report.

The Asian Development Bank and France’s AFD Bank are backing the program, Cleantechnica reported. This is the first program of its kind in the country.

In Pakistan, nearly half of all residents are not connected to the national grid. Residents who are connected to the grid regularly experience rolling blackouts and power outages. And the problem is only expected to get worse in the coming years.

Good morning. I’m Steve Inskeep. This news story makes you check the date, make sure it’s not April 1. The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum is switching to solar energy. It’s in Harlan County, Ky., and depicts, quote, “the lives that revolve around the coal industry.” And WYMT reports the museum gets its power from solar panels. Solar is just cheaper, saving thousands. Communications director Brandon Robinson admits it’s ironic but adds coal is still king.

In February, the newly-appointed US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, indicated he backed a hardline stance against marijuana.

Also that month, the top prosecutor in the country’s third-most populous county announced that possession of small amounts of the drug would be decriminalised in the Houston, Texas, area.

That prosecutor, Kim Ogg, was the first Democratic district attorney in nearly four decades, defeating her Republican rival in an election last November that saw an energized movement to oust bad prosecutors.

Ogg is part of a wave of local leaders – many newly elected – who are barrelling ahead with plans to reform the criminal justice system at the local level, even as Sessions has expressed his desire to reintroduce harsher sentences for drugs and other nonviolent crimes. In Texas, Ogg is also contending with state Republican leaders prepared to fight against progressive reforms at every turn.

“We represent a clear and present danger to the Republican power structure that’s basically ruled Texas for 30 years,” Ogg said earlier this month in her office in downtown Houston, noting that Houstonians elected Democrats all the way up the ballot. “We effected a Democratic sweep in an otherwise deep red state and we were a national anomaly and I’m really proud of our work.”

Neil Gorsuch, the newest justice on the US supreme court, did not seem shy about making his voice heard on Monday as he took his seat on the bench for the first time to hear arguments.

Gorsuch took less than 15 minutes to begin asking questions during an employment discrimination case. He and his colleagues were hearing cases for the first time since Donald Trump’s choice to replace the late Antonin Scalia was sworn in on 10 April.

The case before the justices involved a technical issue about the process for a federal worker to appeal his discrimination claim. The black-robed Gorsuch asked the worker’s lawyer Christopher Landau four questions in a row about the wording of a statute, saying he was “sorry for taking up so much time”.

Gorsuch later sparred with justice department lawyer Brian Fletcher over the meaning of the Civil Service Reform Act, sticking to his reputation for focusing on the text of the law.

“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if we just followed the plain text of the statute?” Gorsuch asked.

Gorsuch was then schooled hard by some of the other SCOTUS justices. The text of the law in question is poorly written and not “plain” as he tried to characterize it. He was also promoting an about face on over 40 years of SCOTUS rulings. This is an important preview of his willingness to throw prior rulings under the bus to move in his desired direction.

Thanks Don. I was testing how well I can keep up with a Bernie specific post and then an open thread for other information at the same time (as some people just want the Bernie stuff, and it makes for easier sharing) but not sure what format I’ll eventually go with.

The US supreme court has ended a dramatic day of legal tussles over Arkansas’ unprecedented plan to execute eight prisoners in 11 days, declining to allow the state to go ahead with Monday night’s scheduled killings in what amounted to a major victory for the condemned inmates’ lawyers and anti-death penalty campaigners.

The nation’s highest court took several hours to reach its decision, finally announcing at 11.50pm that it had declined to lift a stay on the execution of Don Davis, 54, imposed earlier in the day by the supreme court of Arkansas.

The ruling brought to three the number of condemned prisoners who have now been spared the audacious execution schedule set by Republican governor Asa Hutchinson in a rush to use a batch of the lethal injection drug midazolam before it expires at the end of the month.

The US supreme court effectively dealt a bloody nose to Hutchinson at the start of his planned 11-day killing spree, which – had it gone according to plan – would have been the most intense burst of executions in the US in more than 50 years.

On the eve of primary day here, Bernie Sanders led a chaotic procession through the streets of Queens, where he ambled along greeting everyone from teenage twin boys to a woman who emerged from a beauty salon, dye still in her hair.

Powered by a BLT sandwich consumed over a late lunch at Jahn’s, a historic diner in the Jackson Heights neighborhood, Mr. Sanders set out down 37th Avenue, stopping frequently to take selfies or sign an autograph, undeterred by the swarms of children, delivery men, street vendors and others, or by the heat of setting sun.

A UPS delivery man, his hands piled with packages that nearly covered his face, stopped say a quick, “Hey, Bernie.” A man selling individually wrapped roses from a pile slung over his shoulder trailed Mr. Sanders for several blocks.

“Bernie, I need to talk to you!” yelled a street vendor, his stand filled with cell phone cases and other small items.

A Brooklyn native, Mr. Sanders faces a crucial test in Tuesday’s primary, which carries 247 delegates. The senator is seen as an underdog against Hillary Clinton in New York’s race – particularly because it is a closed primary, meaning only registered Democrats can vote – though he continued to predict on Monday morning that he could succeed if turnout is high.

“You gotta beat Trump,” a man on the street called out to Mr. Sanders. “You gotta beat that bastard.”

I don’t recognize this Charlie Patrick, but apparently he used to read LD’s BNRs!

Thanks mags! Im quite proud of all that was accomplished with the BNR and hope to get to a point where we have the same level of success here.

Theres a video on the TYTPolitics youtube page about the resurgence of TOP as a place of ‘resistance’, but I don’t have the link handy at the moment. At some point I need to watch it to see if its serious or snark.

Heres the youtube clip (the huff post link is in the description) at the video:

Reading the article it says that Markos said the sites readers were split 60-40 for Sanders. Maybe in the closest poll ever ran, but most of the time it was far higher than that. He also said editorially they refused to take sides. Lololol. Then goes on to talk about how they didn’t have to because of our ‘decidedly white complexion’, they didn’t need to hitch their wagon to us.

Wonder how much they are pulling in for themselves. Lets not forget how they took a good deal of the Dailykos ActBlue Jar for Bernie for themselves. (And I always like to point out that the BNR Jar was 100% allocated to Sanders). Seems he likes to take credit for the ‘good’ his users do, but then throw said users under the bus when they start not fitting his narrative.

I haven’t watched much of Grim on TYT other than some of his dogging republican townhall clips, but will certainly have to pay closer attention to see if I should continue. Everyone else on the TYTPolitics team are amazing though. Enjoy them much more then TYT itself.

I’m still proud of what was accomplished in Albany County New York. To quote Bernie from the where do we go next meeting held there, “We won Albany County!” This was no small task. Albany is the state capitol and has a powerful Democratic machine. I personally walked many miles and knocked on many doors. It was truly gratifying to score that win. The centrists are losers and will continue to fail as they provide nothing to vote for.

I’d also like to see someone go do some digging into the Iowa primary results, as Im still convinced Bernie won that, and a good investigative journalist could uncover the DNC shenanigans. Didn’t the lady in charge of it all have a Clinton license plate?

Today, to mark Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, about 1,000 prisoners have begun a hunger strike in protest against decades of arbitrary arrest and inhumane treatment. Approximately 6,300 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons and detention centers, including 300 children.

In 2014, as part of a National Lawyers Guild delegation to Palestine, we met with a young Palestinian boy from the village of Beit Ummar near Hebron in the occupied West Bank. Mohammed, 15, described his arrest by the Israeli occupation forces, transfer to three different detention centers, time in solitary, and eventual release three months later after a confession for stone-throwing was extracted from him under torture. Since his release, he had picked up smoking and quit school because he would have had to repeat his previous grade as a result of his absence for three months.

Mohammed is not alone. After release from detention, many children exhibit signs of PTSD, nightmares, behavioral changes, and loss of interest in school. Some will have to repeat grades and some will quit school.

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﻿ Children are often coerced into signing confessions in Hebrew without understanding the language or content of the statement. The most common charge for children is stone-throwing, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 to 20 years.

Oftentimes, arrest and imprisonment are used as retaliatory tactics aimed at countering youth activism or as a means of retribution against older family members.

For a generation, Georgia’s sixth congressional district has voted overwhelmingly for almost every Republican candidate – except Donald Trump.

In a special election on Tuesday, voters in this district will decide if that was an aberration or a sign of a shift.

Although there are plenty of other dynamics in the district – including demographic changes in Atlanta’s prosperous suburbs, local political rivalries and the sprawling district boundaries – Trump somehow looms over them, even if not in the eyes of local voters but in a nation transfixed by the ongoing reality show at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Tuesday’s vote to replace congressman Tom Price, who resigned to join the new cabinet, will be one of the first major tests of partisan strength in the Trump administration.

Eighteen candidates have lined up, including the leading contender, Democrat Jon Ossoff, who has consistently polled above 40%. He faces a number of Republicans, all hoping to pull off a second place finish and then best Ossoff in a June runoff, if no candidate breaks 50%.

Critical voting machines were reported stolen in Georgia just one day before the state’s special congressional election to fill the House seat vacated by now-Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, WSB-TV reports. The devices, called ExpressPoll machines, were reportedly stolen over the weekend from a vehicle owned by a Cobb County precinct manager. “It is unacceptable that the Cobb County Elections Office waited two days to notify my office of this theft,” Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp said in a statement. “We have opened an investigation, and we are taking steps to ensure that it has no effect on the election [Tuesday]. I am confident that the results will not be compromised.”

However, I understand that my Medicare and scrips went up $90 a quarter because I delayed signing up for Social Security for one year. No warning that Congress does this, resulting in my losing a substantial amount (to me), quarterly. I also understand that this occurred under a supposedly progressive Democratic administration.

So I can’t get all rah rah behind Perez and his backers just yet. Show me the peace, not hate toward Russia and Iran. Show me Medicare for All, and not one that costs so much. Show me lessening of corporate powers, not more fund raising all day and then again at the lobbyist parties at night. Show me a fight for a green Marshall plan. And on….

sorry to hear that about SSDI. and I included my story not so much to garner sympathy, but to warn those of us who are near retirement age. If the difference b/w 65 and 66 is not much, you might want to go with 65.

The hard part is that when you make your decision, it’s often too early to know what Congress will do. Either that, or we need to pressure the SocSec dept. to find out exactly what Congress has done and publish that quickly on the site where you sign up.

Yes, what he’s talking about is that if the Medicare Part B premium goes up which it always does, if you are ALREADY on Social Security and your premium comes from there, you are “held harmless” if your SS inflation increase is less that what it goes up by, but if you wait, you pay the increased amount.

This also affects people who are on Medicare but not Social Security or who have their premiums paid NOT out of Social Security. Few people are aware of this.

One more thing to be aware of is, if you postpone collecting Social Security but you are eligible for Medicare, UNLESS you have other medical insurance from a CURRENT employer (NOT from a former employer you may be getting a pension from, that doesn’t count), if you defer signing up for Medicare Part B past age 65, you will pay an increased amount in premiums FOR LIFE for every month past age 65 you didn’t sign up for Medicare, until the time you do. Something a lot of people don’t know either, and no one notifies you.

I believe the same is true for Medicare Part C if you don’t have “creditable coverage,” but not absolutely certain on that. On Part B it’s about 1% a month, so if you waited say 9 years to sign up, you’d pay over double everyone else’s monthly premium for the rest of your life.

Most of our new jobs are in service industries, including retail and health care and personal care and food service. Those industries generally don’t pay a living wage. In 2014 over half of American workers made less than $15 per hour, with some of the top employment sectors in the U.S. paying $12 an hour or less.

Worse yet, most underpaid workers are deprived of the benefits that higher-income employees take for granted. A Princeton study concluded that a stunning 94 percent of the nine million new jobs created in the past decade were temporary or contract-based, rather than traditional full-time positions.

Even at high-flying Google, where privileged employees can make six-figure salaries plus thousands more in stock and cash bonuses, about half of the workforce is made up of temps, contractors, and vendors. …

Corporations could be training workers in new technologies, but instead they blame our underfunded educational system for worker deficiencies. Said an Apple executive, “The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.” Another CEO, oblivious to the lack of jobs at anything other than a high-tech level, blustered “The jobs are there, but the skills are not.” The Wall Street Journal, of course, chimed in: “Many workers who were laid off in recent decades…don’t have the skills to do today’s jobs.”

And the robots are getting more humanlike, sensing the emotions of drivers, for example, and encouraging them to calm down at signs of stress or anger and to stay awake when their eyelids are drooping. Next step? The European Parliament is considering the granting of legal status to robots as “electronic persons.”

With Bannon on way out, official Washington is jumping for joy that Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs who’s now running Trump’s National Economic Council, along with another influential Goldman Sachs alumnus, Dina Powell, are taking over Trump’s brain.

The Washington Post says Cohn is advocating “a centrist vision.” The Post goes on to describe “The growing strength of Cohn and like-minded moderates” as revealed in Trump’s endorsement of government subsidies for exports, and of corporate tax cuts. Says the Post: “The president’s new positions move him much closer to the views of … mainstream Republicans and Democrats.”

In reality, Cohn, Powell, and other Wall Streeters in the Trump White House are pushing Trump closer to the views of Wall Street and big corporations – which are all too often reflected in the views of mainstream Republicans and Democrats who are dependent on the Street and big corporations for campaign money.

So as Trump’s brain shifts from Bannon’s white nationalism to Cohn’s elite financialism, the rest of us are supposed to breathe a sigh of relief? Tax breaks for the rich and subsidies for big corporations are so much better than xenophobia? Is this the real choice we face as a nation?

Corporate America and Wall Street don’t seem to have learned a thing from what’s happened over the last tempestuous year.

Where do they think the Bannon version of Trump came from?

From the cauldron of anger and cynicism welling up from a shrinking and ever more anxious middle class.

From millions of working people so convinced the game is rigged against them they were prepared to topple everything to get real change.

From voters whipped up into a fury over tax breaks and subsidies and bailouts for those at the top – socialism for the rich – while they’ve been getting the losing end of the stick: declining wages, mass firings, less job security.

From people who during the Great Recession lost jobs, homes, and savings as Wall Street got bailed out, and not a single Wall Street executive went to jail.

It is the Democrat’s hour. If Democrats don’t put forward a progressive populist alternative now — if they instead stick to their “mainstream” patrons on Wall Street and in the board rooms of big corporations — they will have missed their moment.

And America will have missed its opportunity to see that neither white nationalism nor boundless wealth at the top can possibly reflect the way forward.

What I’ve wondered for these 2 years is how Obama did not know about this, and second, did he let her twist in the wind on purpose? If so, she and her surrogates need to quit the nonsense about Bernie’s minor criticisms of her.

The U.S. government’s 15-year-long “global war on terror” has spread death and chaos across entire regions – while also imposing propaganda narratives on Americans – with no end in sight, says Nicolas J S Davies

John Nichols is so right. A son and I have been debating since the election. I said that Trump might be just what will wake up the Democratic party. He says, ‘at what expense’. I worry about that also.

I used to wonder if a Trump presidency would shift the pendulum back to the left (a good thing). But I’m concerned about what appears to be some complacency in the Dem response, and resistance as far as listening to the left. See Dianne Feinstein.

It’s not only Republicans that are feeling the heat in their hometowns during this congressional recess. Democrats who aren’t on board with increasingly popular progressive proposals are being held to account as well.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was a case-in-point on Monday, when she faced angry and vocal constituents at a midday town hall meeting in her hometown of San Francisco.

It was her stance on single-payer healthcare—an idea that’s picking up momentum in the wake of last month’s TrumpCare debacle, especially in California—that drew the most vociferous response.

When asked about her position on such a system, Feinstein responded: “If single-payer healthcare is going to mean the complete takeover by the government of all healthcare, I am not there.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, one audience member called Feinstein a “sellout” as others joined in chants of “single-payer now!”

Yes, I saw the tape of her town hall and it was pretty exciting to see the audience yelling, ‘single payer’ and booing her. She is a corporate sell out and if more of them have to feel the heat, maybe, just maybe they will be pushed to our side. The guy who almost won the US representative race, last night in a very conservative district, is a Bernie supporter and ran on a ‘single payer’ platform. He might just win in the play off vote if the DNC gives him some help.

Vivian Leal, a 51-year-old Reno mother who said she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999, pressed Heller the hardest — interrupting and demanding specifics when he talked around her question about whether he will oppose any legislation that revokes Obamacare’s protections for those with pre-existing conditions and that directs those people into high-risk insurance pools.

“You give fuzzy answers,” Leal told Heller. “They ask you direct questions and you evade them by saying, ‘we can have a dialogue,’ ‘we can talk about that,’ ‘we can take a look into that.’ Those are not answers. They don’t tell us where you stand or how you’ll vote or not vote.”

She complained that she wrote a “thoughtful letter” detailing her experiences with the American health care system — but received a form letter back.
When Heller touted he had “rejected the Republican plan” to repeal Obamacare, Leak pressed Heller again.

“I will support high-risk pools, because there are some people who want them,” the senator said, drawing boos. He added that he wants to make sure everyone has “access to the health care that you want.”

Heller is the Senate Republican facing what’s likely to be the most difficult re-election race in the 2018 midterms. Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in the state in 2016, and Democrats — who have to defend 10 Senate seats in states Trump won — see him as the ripest GOP target.

In a joint town hall with Republican Rep. Mark Amodei, Heller faced a rowdy crowd that Reno police pegged at 600 — with hundreds more outside, unable to get into the filled-to-capacity room at a local convention center.

The antidote to Trump and the broader Republican takeover of local and state governments, explained Jackson, is people harnessing their shared experience and finding common cause with one another.

“There’s a new sheriff in town. But it’s not me,” Jackson said. “And it’s not Tom Perez, and it’s not even Bernie Sanders. It’s all of you. Because justice and equality are not achieved by any one man or any one woman. It’s going to take all of us, standing together to demand a better world, and do the work necessary to win it. It’s going to take a movement of people joined together for living wages and equal pay. So join together for free college and universal healthcare. Join together for racial justice. And join together to combat climate change. And finally, join together to seize those levers of power—so that these families here on the ground who have been ignored for far too long—can finally have a grasp. Together we can topple these entrenched power structures, take control of our own destinies, and build the world that we all deserve.”

In his speech, Perez admitted the recent rise in people telling him they simply “don’t know what the Democratic Party stands for anymore.”

I love this Jackson guy!!

The idea that a Sanders-style progressive populism remains key to winning back voters in places where Trump was able to capture the working-class electorate was taken up by state Sen. Troy Jackson, currently the Democratic leader in the Maine Senate.

And this for the kind of LOL that is always welcomed:

By far the biggest applause line of the night came when Sanders said he would soon be announcing a ‘Medicare for All’ bill in the U.S. Senate.

With the crowd on its feet, Sanders said, “The insurance companies may not like it. And the drug companies may not like it.”

At this point someone in the crowd yelled, “Fuck ’em!” Sanders paused and said, “That’s not quite the words I would use… But not bad, not bad.”

Pretty much nothing but negativity. Trump, Trump, Trump, a staff post designed to provide red meat to the troops in the form of some good ol’ Jill Stein bashing for flavor, and a traditional pie fight in a post about the Clinton book “Shattered”.

Ick.

There IS a (lightly attended) post trying to drum up support for Quist, but is there more than a handful of ppl still there who would even care about him?

As some of you know, I suffer from depression. It has gotten worse since November, and the only way I can stay afloat is to basically limit my exposure to news. I came across this, and absolutely laughed my ass off. If only!

Awwww, so feel you, phatkat. There are times i still come close, as well. I probably dump some of it here. But I agree that I sometimes am absent and it can lighten things up a bit. Off to view your link. And I understand that you are talking about a deeper thing.

The notion of the ‘regressive left’ belongs to this Cold War phrasebook used by a cross-section of conservatives and liberals to police the left. If you dare to question certain assumptions about the world, you will inevitably come up against these tactics. Setting the limits on what can be questioned is a key part of preventing real opposition. Thus, if the left is to succeed it must dispense with this language of reaction.